It is indispensable to keep watching rapid developments of the high-tech industry worldwide.

Friday, January 9, 2015

No. 868: Reducing the production cost of a storage battery to one tenth (January 8, 2015)

Technology:

Sumitomo Electric developed a
technology to reduce the production cost of a large-scale storage battery of
the next generation considerably. The new technology eliminates the necessity
to use rare metals and has the possibility to reduce the production cost of a
storage battery to 20,000-30,000 yen per kilowatt hour, less than one tenth of
the current level. The company plans to shift this product to mass production
in 2020.

Redox flow battery

Lithium-ion battery

Sodium-sulfur battery

Cost of introduction

(per kilowatt hour)

20,000-30,000 yen (target)

About 200,000 yen

About 400,000 yen

Capacity enlargement

Excellent

Good

Excellent

Safety

Excellent

Fair

Fair

Life (the number of charge-discharge cycles)

No limit

About 3,500 times

About 4,500 times

The redox flow battery that
Sumitomo Electric commercialized for the first time in the world is in the front
runner position of the next generation storage battery. It has smaller risk of ignition
than the lithium-ion battery because it stores electricity by circulating the
electrolyte inside the tank and creating a chemical reaction with the help of an
ion-exchange membrane besides being two times durable than the lithium-ion
battery.

Sumitomo Denko's redox flow storage batteries

A bird's-eye view of Sumitomo Denko's redox flow storage batteries

The existing technology to build a
redox flow battery is very expensive because it uses a large amount of vanadium.
Sumitomo Electric developed an alternative material using multiple materials of
the metal system. Accordingly, the company has opened up the road to reduce the
production cost of a storage battery considerably. It has already started
building redox flow batteries in Osaka in 2013. It will ship a redox flow storage
battery with a capacity of 60,000 kW to Hokkaido Electric Power in 2015 and
will start the demonstration experiment of the power grid system for redox flow
storage batteries with a leading power company in the U.S.

The Japanese government positions the
storage battery industry as one of the growth industries and supports Japanese
companies to help them get a considerable share in the world market estimated
to grow to 20 trillion yen in 2020.